Gods of the Greataway (21 page)

“I’m telling you you’re not here often enough. I get lonely.” “Well, that’s just too bad. You’ll have to sit it out for a few days.”

“Perhaps I won’t.”

“What do you mean?” There was an edge of alarm in Selena’s voice.

“I have freewill. You don’t own me. I might just make my way back to Boss Castle.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“I might.”

“But … It would be the end of us. You couldn’t … Aware suddenly that she was beginning to plead, she said harshly. “They’d recycle you.”

“Oh, no they wouldn’t. I’m a perfectly good True Human. One of the last. I could be very valuable to the human race — much more valuable than I am as your plaything.” The words began to come fast. Obviously he’d been brooding about this for some time. “I’ve sat in your quarters for eighty years, do you realize that? Just wasting my time and growing old. You’ve kept me a prisoner.”

“You’ve had
everything you wanted, and you’ve been outside often. And you’ve never complained before.” She felt the tears coming. “How was I supposed to know you felt like this? When I first took you, you were just a baby. I fed you and looked after you, and I thought you were happy. And then, later … You grew up so tall and handsome … I
love
you. Can’t you understand that?”

“Then send me a caracal-girl.”

For the first time, she thought:
He’s immature, and he always will be, unless he’s exposed to real people. But all he’s had is the caracal-girls and a few trips into Dream Earth. I made him this way. He is the same flesh as his vat-father, but he is quite a different person. It’s my fault. And now I may lose him
.

“I’ll send you a caracal-girl,” she said.

*

Lying in his hospital bed, Brutus couldn’t understand what was going on around him.

After the initial pain had subsided and he was able to think coherently, he had experienced a flush of pride. He had saved a baby from drowning. Once again, he had dealt capably with an emergency and justified his position as Selena’s right-hand man. He lay there smiling for a while.

Then Alice had arrived and it emerged that he was not the hero he had thought himself to be. Instead, he was a stupid ape, a lackey of the True Humans, possessed of unthinking animal obedience. He went to sleep with that thought, and he awakened in a fine rage.

When Alice came next she was curiously reluctant to discuss the matter, however, and avoided his eyes when he began to rail against the unfair treatment of the Specialists. Then she did a complete about-face.

“We’re all working toward the same objective,” she said.

Brutus had stared at her and had not pursued the matter. He didn’t know what had happened to change her mind, and obviously she didn’t want to tell him. She began to talk about their work and the progress of the latest crop of babies as though nothing had happened. By the time she left, he was totally confused. He tried to work it out, but the only issues he could comprehend were his own grudges: the episode of the babies in the boats, the missing neotenite and Alice’s criticism of his bravery. So he thought about these matters for a long time, scowling.

Eventually
Selena arrived.

Selena was not in the best of tempers, either. Mentor was childish, selfish and getting out of hand. And now she had to go crawling to Brutus, whose recent attitude had been one of sullen resentment and who probably knew about Mentor, and ask him to replace the crystal and access the data. By the time she reached the hospital, she’d convinced herself that Brutus would bear watching while he fixed the Rainbow. She wouldn’t put it past him to sabotage the entire data bank.

She opened the door and saw him lying there, scowling brutishly. She hesitated, fighting a moment’s pity at seeing his gigantic frame so helpless, then strode forward, holding out the crystal.

“I’m sure you know what this is,” she said.

Brutus assumed she’d found it somewhere around the factory. And he assumed that she would think he’d hidden it so that they wouldn’t be able to solve the neoteny problem.

“It looks like some kind of glass cube,” he said sulkily.

“You know damned well what it is.”

“Yes, I do. And I did
not
remove it from the Rainbow.”

“I never said you did. That’s the trouble with you Specialists. You’re always so damned defensive. Always harboring imaginary grudges.”

Brutus’s temper began slowly to rise. He could feel it happening and he made a conscious effort to hold himself back — because he knew that his anger could be a frightening thing to other people. But Selena’s attitude was too much for his self-control.

“Perhaps
you
took the crystal,” he said.

“Don’t be ridiculous! Why should I do that?”

“You might have something to hide!” shouted Brutus before he could stop himself. His great fists were clenching and unclenching as though seeking something to crush.

“Just
exactly what do you mean by that?” asked Selena, white-faced.

“You stole a baby, you … You True Human!” roared Brutus. “You stole it — and let me take the blame!”

“If you mean I requisitioned a foetus for research,” said Selena icily, “you are quite right. But it has nothing to do with this crystal. The data here is ancient.”
Oh, dear God,
she thought.
Can he see me trembling I Can he read my mind?

“So where is the baby now?” asked Brutus in dead tones, suddenly ominously calm.

“That has nothing to do with the crystal.” Stupidly, she brandished it in support of her argument.

Brutus’s hand flashed out. He took the crystal. He said, again, “Where is the baby now?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. What does it matter? What’s one baby more or less?”

With a roar of rage, Brutus crushed the crystal in his huge fist. Little shards tinkled to the floor and lay there glittering. The memory of what happened in the year 108,285 winked out.

*

Those events occurred on countless happentracks. A whole new branch of the Ifalong arose as a result — a branch on which the Triad did
not
discover the cure for neoteny and did
not
defeat the Bale Wolves or remove the Hate Bombs. On those happentracks Starquin remained a prisoner. The Dedos were instructed to investigate other possibilities, and the members of the Triad went their separate ways. Crucial events in Earth’s Ifalong were delayed by twenty thousand years. Alpacas and jaguarundis became extinct.

And the Song of Earth told of different triumphs, different heroes. All because Selena had been unable to make the decision that Shenshi wanted.

But on countless other happentracks she
had
been able to — like this: She opened the door and saw Brutus lying there, frowning unhappily. She hesitated, her irritation turning to pity as she saw his gigantic frame so helpless. She walked to his bedside.

“How are
you feeling, Brutus?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll be up in a day or two.”

“That was a very courageous thing you did.”

His frown lifted. “Thank you.”

“I realize you people sometimes get disheartened because the babies don’t turn out right. I’m hoping we’ll be able to change all that, soon. We’ve found a crystal that I think will help us a lot.” She related the events of the afternoon at Horst’s Stones, concluding, “So as soon as you feel well enough, I’d like you to replace the crystal and access the data for us.”

Brutus watched her.

“And there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” she said. “A long time ago I did a very foolish thing. Worse than that, it was an illegal thing …”

*

The events resulting from Selena’s first choice drift into an uncertain Ifalong where only the principal events are known through the Rainbow’s projections. The events resulting from her second choice are well known.

Both choices are often compared by the minstrels and poets, and the whole incident is used as a cautionary tale.

So runs a couplet in the Song of Earth.

M
ankind
is one of the few Galactic races that distinguishes Good from Evil. To take it a stage further, Mankind is one of the only intelligent species that assumes that there is something intrinsically and cosmically
wrong
with that which it does not like. Mankind, for instance, classifies the creatures of the Red Planet as evil because once they cut a swathe through the Greataway with their Weapon. In contrast, Mankind sees the kikihuahuas as good because they are helpful and agreeable.

However, if this matter was put to either the creatures of the Red Planet or the kikihuahuas, they would simply say they were trying to survive with the best means at their disposal. And they would grant their enemies the same motives.

This odd trait of Mankind — the concept of Good and Evil — makes it inevitable that, if a creature such as the Bale Wolf should evolve, it would happen within Mankind’s orbit.

*

Many centuries before the time of our story, when humans were beginning to lose the capability to build, service or even understand their own machines, the kikihuahuas developed a simple little animal from the same stock as the memory potto and presented it to Earth. It became known as the saybaby. It had a mind of great logic but extremely limited intelligence, and it had been indoctrinated with computer and human language. It worked in conjunction with the Rainbow, taking instruction from its human masters, quickly analyzing the available data, sorting it into logical order in human language and verbalizing it.

So
when Brutus replaced the data crystal and gained access to it through the keyboard, he did not need to devise a complex program in order to extract the specific happenings that might relate to neoteny in their correct order of causality. He didn’t have the skill to do that, anyway. Instead, he summoned the saybaby, which condensed weeks of work into an hour.

Brutus, Selena, Zozula, Manuel and the Girl were present when the saybaby finally turned away from the flow of aural and visual displays. These displays had been far too rapid for the humans to understand, but the saybaby had seen them all with its goggling eyes, heard them all with its outsize ears, rejected what it did not need and sorted the remainder. Now it was ready to speak.

First, it cleared its throat with a tiny cough and gaped a couple of times as though practicing. Then it spoke in a piping voice.

It spoke of the Macrobes and the second mistake these little parasites had made. They had discovered through the Everlings that immortality was not necessarily the key to survival. They had observed human history and noted the natural appeal of juvenile characteristics: the plumpness, short limbs, snub noses, the innocence, and that natural
goodness
that triggers the protective instinct in adults.

“The Macrobes decided that the key to survival was
to be loved,”
piped the saybaby. So the Macrobes went back into the genes of their hosts. They identified those genes that were responsible for behavior, and they split the gentle from the aggressive. They identified the genes responsible for physical characteristics, and they split the rounded from the angular, the babyish from the adult, the pretty from the ugly. They did a very thorough job on the human form, and they accomplished this separation throughout the gene bank.

“The next time the vats were used, two distinct groups of creatures emerged. One was a gentle, lovable thing totally unsuitable for survival in any normal environment. The other was a cruel, violent demon.

“The
Macrobes had made another mistake, but this time it affected the whole human race. The People Planet was the repository for the only remaining True Human tissue hardy enough to breed true and to survive. The samples had been gathered from Cuidadors long dead. And now the Macrobes had polluted the bank. It was a sad year for the True Human race.

“The evil monsters were sent into exile, and it is hoped that they remain there. But the neotenites will be there to rebuke Mankind until the last True Human dies and the People Planet closes down and Earth is left in the hands of the Wild Humans and the Specialists.” Having finished, the saybaby closed its eyes.

“So
that’s
how the neotenites came about,” said Selena.

The Girl said, “The evil monsters … You know what they are, of course. They’re the Bale Wolves. Do you remember, Manuel? When we were on the Sky train, the passengers were scared of meeting the Bale Wolves. I thought it was some kind of legend, but maybe they’re the real thing.”

“I’m sure they are,” said Manuel. “And I tell you who’s seen them.”

“Who?” Brutus asked the question so sharply that they stared at him. He began to twiddle his fingers in embarrassment.

“Loanna,” said Manuel. “The girl Horst brought back. She described them, remember? Hairy humans, nasty as all hell? Those are the Bale Wolves, for sure.”

“This Loanna,” said Brutus, “she’s an Everling?”

“That’s right.” Manuel described the events at Horst’s Stones while Brutus nodded rapidly, again and again.

“Does this get us any further?” asked the Girl.

“Now we know the cause of neoteny,” said Selena. “It’s a step in the right direction.”

“Yes, but surely they’d have found the cure for neoteny back in the hundred and ninth millennium — if there is a cure.” The Girl sounded despondent. She had hoped the crystal would reveal a little more.

Zozula
said, “I don’t suppose they even tried to find a cure. They blamed themselves for not policing their research more closely, and their main concern was to get the Bale Wolves out of there, fast. And then they probably closed down the vats for several generations. By the time they got back into production, the details of the Bale Wolves’ creation had been forgotten. They
wanted
to forget it.”

“They were so horrified by what had happened that they shipped off the data crystal with Loanna,” said Selena. “It was an indictment of their stupidity. They knew that the crystal would only return if the Bale Wolves were safely isolated.”